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Page Speeds / JS Minification

Publishing help SEO
#1

Hi there,

So, I have managed to persuade the powers that be to migrate their site over to webflow as well as the possibility of our 14,000+ client base websites but there are things they are a little concerned about.

My CEO currently spends about $30,000 per month on PPC ads and is also heavily invested into SEO optimisation. He’s done some research and picked up on the fact that webflow websites perform quite badly on tools that Google provide to analyse the speed of your website.

I know some are going to disagree that page speed and these tools have no impact on how Google rank your site, but it actually does have an impact.

We had this problem recently on our main website (https://www.telecomsworldplc.co.uk) and the issues we were facing were:

  • Image Optimisation
  • Eliminate Render Blocking Javascript and CSS on above the fold content
  • Enable compression
  • Minify Javascript

We rectified these points and our organic ranking improved quite considerably. We then went through our sister sites and the same improvements also improved their organic rankings.

So I guess I need to break the questions down.

  1. Can the Javascript be minified?
  2. Most reports state to leverage browser caching and compression. I thought it would of been already?

I love webflow and really want to get everything migrated over. Hopefully you are able to engage in this topic.

Also, I sent an email to enterprise@webflow.com last week but haven’t had a response yet?

Thanks
Jamie

1 Like
Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
How do I leverage browser Caching?
Page Load Speed
#2

Hi @JamieBrown

Thank you for posting and for your detailed questions.

Regarding your email to enterprise@webflow.com–apologies that we did not respond. I searched our system but was unable to find an email, which address did you send it from? Do you mind resending your questions to support@webflow.com? Thanks in advance, and I’m standing by for your message.

I will do my best to answer your two questions, then provide some more info around our hosting and site performance.

  1. We currently offer a minify CSS feature, but do not have a minify JS feature at this time. You are not alone in thinking this would be an awesome feature to have in Webflow. It is definitely something you can vote for on our Webflow Wishlist.

  2. We do leverage browser caching and compression–we have cache expiry headers on all Webflow built sites. If you’d like, you can provide more details on this in the email you send to support@webflow.com.

A few other notes on our hosting:

  • Webflow hosts websites on Fastly.com 's secure CDN. This is the same servers that are used for big news sites like The Guardian ( https://www.fastly.com/customers/guardian ) . Also, your site assets and automatic backups are kept on Amazon Web Services.

  • We have a responsive image feature that creates several image size variants and only serves up the best image for that screen size and resolution. This greatly increases page loading time, but Google does not yet factor this into their page speed tool. You can read more on this here: http://webflow.com/feature/responsive-images

  • We’ve also prioritized the Time to First Byte (TTFB), which is the biggest factor in visitor experience and page load speeds. This is often overlooked in most pagespeed tools, but it actually affects your site’s rankings.

  • Regarding PageSpeed tools, our CTO, Bryant, explains PageSpeed and its affects in further detail here.
    How PageSpeed Actually Affects Your Google Rankings

  • You can also read more about Webflow hosting specifically from this blog post: https://webflow.com/blog/what-to-look-for-in-a-web-hosting-service

I hope this helps to clarify some things for you and your team! Don’t hesitate to reach out with any other questions you have!

2 Likes
#3

Hi @Brando,

Thank you for your detailed response, it certainly does help. I re-sent the email I originally sent to enterprise@ to support@. The email is more in regards to the vast amount of clients we want to bring across and some questions relating to features.

I’ll definitely be voting for minifying javascript in the wishlist.

I appreciate your reply.

Thanks,
Jamie

1 Like
#4

Hi @JamieBrown - just a heads up - we just pushed an update that lets you minify your JavaScript on a per-project basis :tada: (with minification as the default mode).

6 Likes
#5